


breathe in you

by schlimmbesserung



Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Existentialism, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schlimmbesserung/pseuds/schlimmbesserung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's difficult attempting to cope with the end of the world</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathe in you

**Author's Note:**

> an old fic that i still like
> 
> psuedo science probably
> 
> i need to get back into kpop

 

Hoya knows for sure that the world is ending when Woolim terminates their contracts.  
  
Tablo breaks the news with his arms crossed over his chest, a solemn look in his eyes. He’s old, Hoya realizes; a clinical observation. He’s on the wrong side of thirty with a lifetime of experiences under his belt. He looks tired and Hoya wonders if the deadness of his eyes is a result of years in the industry or their current situation, the bleakness of their future. “They’re not closing the dorms--” and really there is no more room for doubt at this point “--but you should go home. Spend time with your families.”  
  
Sungjong takes it the best, nodding sagely and promptly disappearing into his room, presumably to begin packing. Hoya thinks that they don’t give the maknae nearly enough credit; he’s (eerily) grown up when it comes to serious matters like this. Woohyun, on the other hand, kicks the radio across the marble floor and punches the wall a few times before Sunggyu finally restrains him. What’s most surprising is that Myungsoo cries, ragged and choking, a deep sound that tears from the bottom of his stomach. Sungyeol shushes him and pats his back and looks around the room with wide eyes that say “someone help me, I don’t know what to do.”  
  
None of them do.  
  
Over time, they scatter, drifting around the apartment like particles of dust and settling in pocketed clusters. The shock of the situation dulls into something more subdued. Catatonic. Dongwoo is sprawled in the middle of the room on his stomach playing a card game with Sunggyu, having failed to convince anyone else to play with him (the oldest probably agreed out of pity). Woohyun leans heavily against the leader, eyes closed, cradling a freshly bandaged knuckle close to his chest. Myungsoo takes to staring numbly at some place in the distance and, after a few failed attempts to jab and prod him back to functionality, Sungyeol slips away to help Sungjong.  
  
It has to be the quietest they’ve _ever_ been and the tension in the air feels thick like syrup when Hoya shifts. He almost wants to scream just to break it, just to prove that he can, but he doesn’t and that leads him to believe that maybe he actually can’t. Maybe he isn’t strong enough. Instead, he drags his eyes over the dip in Dongwoo’s back, follows it to the swell of his shoulder blades, the curve of his neck and the line of his jaw right up to the profile of his lips. It keeps him sane, for the time being.  
  
-  
  
The door to Hoya and Sungjong’s room opens. Hoya cranes his neck slowly, his brain whirring back into to action click by mechanical click, and he wonders just how long he spaced out. The maknae comes out of the room dragging a suitcase and clutching one of his teddy bears close, Sungyeol’s arm draped protectively around his shoulder. No, wait, protective is the wrong word. The taller boy’s spindly fingers are twisted tightly in the crook of Sungjong’s neck, fabric bunching up around them.  
  
“That’s all you’re taking?” Sunggyu eyes the single suitcase with his eyebrows pinched together.  
  
Sungjong shrugs, gaze falling to the floor. He shuffles his feet for a moment and then finally says, “I figured I won’t need much.”  
  
Understanding sets in the leader’s face. His brow furrows deeper.  
  
“I already called the cab,” Sungjong says, looking up again. He smiles hesitantly, brushes a stray lock of hair from his face.  
  
“Bus or train?” Sunggyu asks, conversationally. This must be what denial is like. Disassociation.  
  
“Train,” the youngest replies shortly. His voice is starting to sound kind of strange. He glances around the room, eyes meeting with no one. Sungyeol tugs him a bit closer.  
  
“I, um,” he starts again, pauses.  “I wish I could stay, but--my mom and my brother-- I--” He stops, catching his quivering lip between his teeth, blinking rapidly.  
  
There’s a shuffling noise and Myungsoo is standing up, crossing the room quickly, socked feet slipping on the marble. He gathers the maknae in his arms and Sungyeol wraps them both in his. Dongwoo scrambles up and joins them and Hoya finds himself doing the same, urgency and helplessness pressing on his lungs. They all end up in a tight awkward huddle, Sungjong in the center with his face pressed into Myungsoo’s chest, shoulders shaking. Hoya thinks he’s crying, but when he pulls back enough for his face to show Hoya sees that he’s laughing.  
  
“I’m really glad,” he chokes out in a garbled voice between chuckles. “That I got to know you guys. That we got to do all this together. I’m really-- I’m so glad.”  
  
The maknae is more mature than they give him credit for.  
  
-  
  
Dongwoo offers to sleep in Hoya’s room with him that night, so he won’t be lonely. _It would be strange sleeping alone, wouldn’t it,_ he says, with that innocent, good-natured grin. _After all this time._  
  
Hoya doesn’t point out that he’s slept alone plenty of times since debut. Likewise, he doesn’t tell him he would feel even better if he slept in his bed with him. He seriously thinks about saying it, rolls it around in his head and plays through all of Dongwoo’s possible responses, from harsh reality to storybook ending and everything in between. The older man’s horsey smile proves to be too much for him.  
  
He ends up spending the night staring at the ceiling and listening to Dongwoo’s soft, steady breathing. He's not even in the mood for his usual hip hop lullaby. He can hear the muffled sounds of the television from the other room, fading in and out of static. He catches snippets of the news report; suicides and crime rates shooting up, company bankruptcy, food shortages. He pretends not to hear Woohyun and Sunggyu’s bitter exchange of “turn it off” and “I want to-- need to know” and “but _I_ don’t-- I _can’t_ \--”  
  
He’s not sure why, but he pulls up a faded memory of his sterile high school classroom, the one he tucked away in the far recesses of his mind and left until it blurred muted gray around the edges. He learned in science that the galaxy has a total diameter of somewhere around one hundred thousand light years, and a light year is around six _trillion_ miles. He learned that one hundred billion stars are born and die each year, which corresponds to about two hundred and seventy five million per day, in the whole observable universe. And each time a star dies, it sterilizes any nearby solar systems, obliterates them in a blink of an eye. It happens two hundred and seventy five million times _every single day._  
  
He never gave it a second thought back then. He was too busy scrawling lyrics in the margins of his notebooks, daydreaming in throbbing bass and blinding stage lights. In retrospect, he feels naïve.  
  
-  
  
Morning is sour and thick on Hoya’s tongue as he stumbles into the kitchen, raking a hand through his hair and rubbing sleep from his eyes. The sunlight streaming in through the windows is sharp and uncomfortable. Sungyeol is already awake, or perhaps _still_ awake, standing with his back to the counter and a mug of coffee to his lips.  
  
Hoya opens the refrigerator and stares at the meager contents in a mix of disappointment and despair. He turns to Sungyeol, “Cereal?”  
  
“We have two boxes left,” he replies, pausing for a moment. Spider web cracks of tired red run through the whites of his eyes. “I used the last of the milk.”  
  
“I noticed,” he says, and then, “L?”  
  
Sungyeol’s shoulders tense up, square off, but his voice is light and playful (shutting Hoya out), “He’s still sleeping. If he’s not up soon, I’ll dump some water on him.”  
  
Hoya smiles, “You’d be lucky if that actually works.”  
  
-  
  
Woohyun announces his plans to leave like he wants the whole world to stop and acknowledge the fact. The most he gets is a curious look from Hoya, a displeased frown from Dongwoo, and a couple of sidelong glances from Myungsoo and Sungyeol. Sunggyu says nothing, does nothing, and Hoya notes the way Woohyun’s lips purse together tersely, the way his hands tighten into fists.  
  
“Are you...” Dongwoo’s voice dies down just as soon as it swells up and he’s left open mouthed and looking uncertain.  
  
Hoya decides to help him out, _has_ to, “How are you getting home?”  
  
“Taking the bus out to Osan, then my parents are picking me up,” he answers, varying levels of indifference and irritation.  
  
“We can ride with you to Osan,” Dongwoo offers but Woohyun is waving him off before he even gets a chance to finish.  
  
“No. I don’t,” he halts, jaw flexing smoothly beneath his skin. His eyes slip to the leader and flick away, volatility broiling in his gaze. “I mean, it’s over. You can stop pretending like you ever gave a shit about me. It was all just a show for the fans, anyway. Let’s just go our separate ways. Let’s just give up. Lie down and die and not even ask any questions. Right?”  
  
Dongwoo looks genuinely hurt as the door slams and anger flares in Hoya’s chest, briefly, before he realizes that Woohyun’s words weren’t really directed at them in particular. And maybe he never wanted the whole world to stop for him, after all. Just one person.  
  
“ _Hyung_ ,” Dongwoo all but whimpers, imploring.  
  
Sunggyu says nothing, does nothing, and Hoya notes the way his thumb scrolls up the volume of his iPod, the cover of _Seperation Anxiety_  on the screen.  
  
-  
  
That night Hoya’s shirt sticks to his skin with sweat and he dreams about the summertime when he was nine years old. He remembers his favorite swing, the rusted one that was a bit too low to the ground, but that was okay because it swung higher. He sinks into the smell of cut grass and his mom singing as she hangs the laundry, cold swimming pools and eyes stinging with chlorine. He feels his chubby fingers clinging to a popsicle stick, cheeks sticky with juice and joy and freedom. The sunlight dapples through the leaves and everything is beautiful and he never even realized it, never thought he needed to.  
  
Things change, people change. His aspirations and those of his parents’ clash violently and the collision rips him apart, the raw edges of the wounds healing into thick, mottled scars. He reaches for the stars and comes away with a handful of dust, quietly falls in love, quietly falls into futility. The very essence of _reality_ changes and leaves his head reeling, his lungs short of breath, and he can’t. He can’t.  
  
His eyelids pop open and he panics for a moment, disoriented until he realizes that he is awake and remembers that he is alive, he is real. He rolls over onto his side, turns off his music and squints into the darkness until he can make out the form of his hyung, sprawled on his stomach across the room. The covers have been tossed aside in the heat and one of his arms hang limply off the side of the bed, fingers grazing the floor.  
  
“ _Dongwoo_ ,” he whispers, reverent, pleading. “ _Dongwoo._ ”  
  
He’s not disappointed when there is no reply. He didn’t expect one.  
  
-  
  
Hoya rolls out of bed and lands in a foot full of shaving cream, coldness seeping into the space between his toes. The floor, the _entire_ floor is smeared in the stuff and Hoya groans loud enough to stir Dongwoo into half-wakefulness.  
  
“S’that smell?” he mumbles groggily, eyes slit and leaning up halfway on his elbow. He casts a glance down to the floor, then back up to Hoya, then he’s rolling onto his back, laughter bubbling up from somewhere deep in his stomach. He manages to wheeze out, “What-- What is this?”  
  
“Ahhh, I don’t know,” Hoya reluctantly picks his way across the room. It’s for the best for everyone that his shoes were spared from the assault. Dongwoo hops out of bed, chuckling and snickering as his feet sink into soft, cool white. Toilet paper is strung all over the living room and kitchen.  
  
“ _Lee_ _Sungyeol!_ ” Sunggyu yells from his room, probably waking up in much of the same way as Hoya. The eldest opens his door and sputters at the sight, starts to storm over to others’ room. “I swear to _God,_ Sungyeol, I am going to end your life in the most terrible way imaginable. Sungyeol!”  
  
“Um, hyung,” Dongwoo starts, pointing at a note taped to the front door.  
  
 _It’s been fun._  
 _Good morning and good bye._  
  
 _Love, Lee Sungyeol & __Kim Myungsoo._  
  
Sunggyu deflates, the fight going straight out of him, arms dropping to his sides and shoulders slumping.  
  
“Oh,” is all he says. “Okay.”  
  
-  
  
Sunggyu forbids them from turning on the t.v. or the radio and tucks himself into his room, drowning his fears in Nell and not even singing along. He lives like a shell of a person and Hoya doesn’t blame him. Sunggyu’s lost everything and then some, he’s somehow lost more than anyone else.  
  
Dongwoo, on the other hand, is concerned. It shows in the tug of his lips and the look in his chocolate eyes. He spends long hours slumped against the leader’s side, murmuring things Hoya can’t quite catch and touching him, gripping his shoulder and holding his hand and smoothing his hair. He sleeps in the eldest’s room two nights in a row and (although there’s nothing to suggest Dongwoo does anymore in Sunggyu’s room than he did in Hoya’s, nothing to suggest Dongwoo even has that kind of interest in men) jealousy spreads like infection through Hoya’s insides.  
  
And how _stupid_ is that?  
  
-  
  
He gazes out at night sky and thinks about how the light from all the stars, the ones he can actually see now that most of Seoul has blacked out, is billions and billions of years old. Most of those stars are probably dead now. Hoya feels like he’s looking into a graveyard.  
  
He wonders idly if, hundreds of millennia from now, in some far stretch of the galaxy, someone will watch as their sun flickers out. It’s more likely that they won’t even notice.  
  
-  
  
“I’m leaving,” Sunggyu declares, so abruptly that Hoya chokes a little on his water. He shouldn’t be surprised, it was only to be expected.  
  
Dongwoo’s face twists up like it can’t decide which emotion it wants to express; relief or pain.  
  
“You should, too,” Sunggyu continues, sober and broken. “It’s not healthy to stay. There’s nothing left for us here.”  
  
Hoya thinks about arguing against that, but he never saw much sense in fighting without true conviction.  
  
“Soon,” he lies instead, and Dongwoo nods his agreement.  
  
-  
  
“Why are you still here?” Hoya asks, two days later. They can’t even get a signal on the radio anymore and the heat has become near unbearable, so bad that they walk around in their boxers and beaters, cold rags wrapped around their necks. It’s late November. They’ve resorted to rationing out their last box of cereal and Hoya wonders how much longer this will go on.  
  
Dongwoo doesn’t answer him right away. He continues peeling his orange (which, by now, probably isn’t even safe to eat anymore) with care and concentration. In a perfect world, he would say _I’m waiting for you._ In a perfect world, oblivion wouldn’t be breathing down their necks. He looks up, “Why are you?”  
  
Hoya shrugs lamely and makes his best attempt to appear as if he’s _not_ struggling to find the words, as if the weight of it all is _not_ cracking his ribs and crushing his lungs and making everything impossible, so impossible. “It isn’t like I have the best relationship with my family.”  
  
“Bad enough to not even want to reconcile? Not even now?” and his voice is soft, layered in pity and accentuated with genuine concern. He wants Hoya to go, thinks he should-- and he’s right. But Hoya won’t leave. He'll never leave Dongwoo.  
  
“What about you?” he shoots back. “What about your grandma and your sisters? Do they even know you’re still alive? They actually care about you, why would you stay?”  
  
As soon as he says it, he wishes he could just swallow the words back up, make it like they were never spoken at all. The dancer flinches back like he’s been punched. Hoya starts to apologize but it dries up on the tip of his tongue.  
  
Jarring, nervous laughter spills from the older man, lips pulled back, “I guess I’m just stupid.”  
  
 _No,_ Hoya thinks. _No, you’re not._  
  
-  
  
Hoya dreams of bodies that flow together like two rivers joined and you can’t tell what water came from which side. Effortlessness, natural, breathing each other’s air, the _same_ air, but he _can’t_ breathe and he’s drowning in it, drowning in the flashes and pulsing and aching and want, drowning in Dongwoo.  
  
It’s all in his head.  
  
-  
  
Hoya feels small as he stands on the edge of the rooftop (the edge of the world), staring up into the open expanse of sky, the endless expanse of the universe. He’s dwarfed against the darkened cityscape, the hollow hull of what was once a glaring metropolis (it wasn’t even that long ago), but he’s a speck when compared with the enormity of the whole conceivable universe. All of those dead stars powdered across the night sky.  
  
Half a year ago they were releasing a new album, practicing twelve hours a day to perfect a new dance routine. Hoya and Dongwoo would stay late and think up ways to make everything more fluid, more synchronized. He would fester in love, waste all his time making himself miserable with the restrictions he allowed others to push onto him that seemed _so important_.  
  
“Don’t jump.”  
  
He swivels quickly, imagines that he loses his footing and goes tumbling down, “I wasn’t going to.”  
  
“I know,” Dongwoo chuckles, flip-flops scraping along the concrete as he joins Hoya, perches on the precipice. “I was joking.”  
  
Silence stretches between them.  
  
“Yah, will you sit down?” he asks (rather, commands) after a moment. “You’re making me nervous. What if you lost your balance?”  
  
“Worry-wart,” he teases, but obliges. It still somewhat amazes him that they can be this relaxed, this _sane_. He thinks again about denial, desensitization, twisted methods of coping that the brain induces for self-preservation.  
  
They talk about nothing and everything and anything except what’s coming. Dongwoo sprinkles his words with laughter, just like he always has (he never stopped) and Hoya listens, gives when needed, ebbs and flows in perfect harmony with him, just like he always has (he never stopped). Mostly, they remember. They remember the color of the walls in various hotels, their debut haircuts, old conversations, and the many idiosyncrasies of Infinite. Everything that had seemed _so insignificant._  
  
Hoya can feel the simmering heat of the morning sun before the sky even tinges yellow. The conversation lapses into silence when the fiery rim peeks over the horizon. This, Hoya somehow knows, will be the last sunrise. He can feel it in his gut and he begs _no, not yet._  
  
A tendril of light crawls along the sun’s edge, swells and wriggles like some untamed beast. He can feel a corresponding wave of heat, can hear glass cracking under the sudden burst of calidity. His heart thrums in his chest. The sky bends into strange colors of green and purple, warping like the northern lights and it’s terrifying and beautiful all at once.   
  
He feels overwhelmed by the scale of things, the age of things. He buckles under the violence and destruction, the appalling energy, and hopeless gravity. He can never even _begin_ to wrap his mind around it and he _struggles_ to wrap his mind around it. Their entire existence will be wiped out and no one will ever even _know._  He feels like the universe is saying, “Do you know how grand I am? How old I am? Can you even _comprehend_ what I am? What are _you_ , compared to _me?_ ”  
  
It’s not fair that the end of the world gets to be so humbling and magnificent. They were arrogant to ever imagine they could lay some claim to infinity.  
  
“Hoya,” Dongwoo says and he grasps his hand, tangles their fingers together.

Hoya feels the stretch of skin across knuckles, coarse and imperfect. He looks at Dongwoo and drinks it in, the shape of his jaw and the arch of his brow. His eyes are too small and sharp, his mouth is too big, and his hair is unruly, wisps of crisp gold that glow translucent in the too bright sunlight. Everything about him is flawlessly disastrous and he never told him, never even tried.  
  
He tries now but the words slip from his mind like water through the creases of cupped hands. The air is hard to breathe and it _hurts_.  
  
“Why did you stay?” he asks (chokes) because he has to know, needs it with every fiber of his being.  
  
“Because,” Dongwoo hesitates, voice almost lost in the wind. Hoya waits, silently urging him to continue. He licks his lips, swallows and Hoya watches his adam’s apple bob, watches the light flare across his face, “Because you need me more than they do. At least, I thought you did.”  
  
Hoya feels his stomach drop away and the first thing he does is try to smother the (useless) sparks of hope before they-- but, you know what,  _fuck_ that. “I love you."   
  
It’s pathetic that it takes the apocalypse to give him to courage to finally say it, breathe it all out in a desperate rush of air. "I  _love_  you.”  
  
“I know,” his fingers tighten around Hoya’s and he amends, “I knew.”  
  
The heat rolls in his head, in his stomach, and the light is blinding, pulling shadows out from under the buildings and making Hoya’s ears ring.  
  
It’s all still jumbled and unclear; what really mattered and what didn’t. What he should have fought for and what he should have let go, which problems were real and which he conjured within his own mind. He still feels the desolation of being tiny and unimportant in the greater scheme of it all, but there is one thing that he knows for certain, one thing that the universe could never make him disbelieve--  
  
“For what it’s worth now,” Dongwoo smiles forlornly, all gums and teeth. “I loved you, too.”  
  
\-- that, at least, _matters._


End file.
